December 2011
32 posts
8 tags
On His Blindness
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,—
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
I fondly ask:—But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: God doth...
7 tags
The Soul Selects Her Own Society
The soul selects her own society
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.
Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.
I’ve known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.
By Emily Dickinson
6 tags
Homage to Winter
You: a woman too old
for passive contemplation
caught staring out a window
at bird-of-paradise spikes
jeweled with rain, across an alley
It’s winter in this land
of roses, roses sometimes
the fog lies thicker around you than your past
sometimes the Pacific radiance
scours the air to lapis
In this new world you feel
backward along the hem of your whole life
questioning every...
11 tags
Why I Am Not A Painter
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days...
9 tags
Sudden Light
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow’s soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
...
8 tags
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
‘Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity...
10 tags
Jasmine
Saturday evening grows
darker as the teapot
whistles. I get a mug,
humming, and breathe
the ancient scent,
faintly familiar.
Every summer we
gathered the young
jasmine leaves, while I sang
songs that I learned in school.
On sunny days, she spread
the leaves out in the back
yard where I sat and dreamt
the scent of long winter
nights beside the hot stove.
Immense warmth calms my...
13 tags
Lending Out Books
You’re always giving, my therapist said.
You have to learn how to take. Whenever
you meet a woman, the first thing you do
is lend her your books. You think she’ll
have to see you again in order to return them.
But what happens is, she doesn’t have the time
to read them, & she’s afraid if she sees you again
you’ll expect her to talk about them, & will
want to lend her even more. So...
20 tags
Toward the Winter Solstice
Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.
Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call...
13 tags
For You
For you I undress down to the sheaths of my nerves.
I remove my jewelry and set it on the nightstand,
I unhook my ribs, spread my lungs flat on a chair.
I dissolve like a remedy in water, in wine.
I spill without staining, and leave without stirring the air.
I do it for love. For love, I disappear.
By Kim Addonizio
8 tags
Winter Love
I would like to decorate this silence,
but my house grows only cleaner
and more plain. The glass chimes I hung
over the register ring a little
when the heat goes on.
I waited too long to drink my tea.
It was not hot. It was only warm.
By Linda Gregg
8 tags
Sonnet for a Tango in the Twilight
Who was it who said it all in a homegrown tango
Whose drawn-out, lovely sweetness made me pause
Under some unassuming little balconies
In that leafy neighborhood that isn’t even yours?
All I know is that in its sorrow I saw a simple yard
Within whose earthen walls the whole sunset fit,
A place I’d glimpsed a few months ago in some slum,
And that I loved you more than ever, hearing it.
...
10 tags
Eating Alone
I’ve pulled the last of the year’s young onions.
The garden is bare now. The ground is cold,
brown and old. What is left of the day flames
in the maples at the corner of my
eye. I turn, a cardinal vanishes.
By the cellar door, I wash the onions,
then drink from the icy metal spigot.
Once, years back, I walked beside my father
among the windfall pears. I can’t recall
our words. We may...
8 tags
The Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the...
6 tags
Quiet Girl
I would liken you
To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.
By Langston Hughes
6 tags
Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll...
7 tags
Prayer for Sleep
The chiropractor sent me home
with my left ankle taped, my neck
cracked, and instructions not to sleep
on my belly, so when it came time
for bed, I dropped a tequila shot,
laid back and closed my lids, entrails
exposed to vultures of bad dreams.
From the neighboring pillow,
my love whispered theories
of meditation, biofeedback, post-
...
6 tags
Mnemosyne
It’s autumn in the country I remember
How warm a wind blew here about the ways!
And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber
During the long sun-sweetened summer-days.
It’s cold abroad the country I remember.
The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain
At midday with a wing aslant and limber;
And yellow cattle browsed upon the plain
It’s empty down the country I...
5 tags
Visions of Never Being Heard from Again
I stopped by to see you but you were not home
marshland
the pure vision
my ancient lives all risen up and rising
shudder in my bed to come up against
a living religion; they get offended so easily;
blow up your hundred-foot Buddha
no problem. Entire mountainside.
Presumably it’s an improvement
on whatever came before
on what was here before
ancestral crypt your...
6 tags
Books
How you loved to read in the snow and when your
face turned to water from the internal heat
combined with the heavy crystals or maybe it was
reversus you went half-blind and your eyelashes
turned to ice the time you walked through swirls
with dirty tears not far from the rat-filled river
or really a mile away—or two—in what
you came to call the Aristotle room
in a small hole outside the...
7 tags
Approach of Winter
The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden.
By William Carlos Williams
7 tags
This Deepening Takes Place Again
What if everything
were revealed: where I was
last night. You, etc. The rain
is coming down like salad.
My sister’s hair
reminds me of my sister
so much I can’t
stop looking. Who am I
to have arms? On the plane
one short dream:
a baby so small
it wasn’t even human,
just a bouquet
of light with wise
cellular eyes. If losing me
is the worst thing to happen,
your...
6 tags
The impact of a dollar upon the heart
The impact of a dollar upon the heart
Smiles warm red light
Sweeping from the hearth rosily upon the white table,
With the hanging cool velvet shadows
Moving softly upon the door.
The impact of a million dollars
Is a crash of flunkeys
And yawning emblems of Persia
Cheeked against oak, France and a sabre,
The outcry of old beauty
Whored by pimping merchants
To submission before wine and...
7 tags
Acquainted with the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not...
5 tags
Feed Me, Also, River God
Lest by diminished vitality and abated
vigilance, I become food for crocodiles—for that quicksand
of gluttony which is legion. It is there close at hand—
on either side
of me. You remember the Israelites who said in pride
and stoutness of heart: “The bricks are fallen down, we will
build with hewn stone, the sycamores are cut down, we will
change to...
5 tags
Hawk
All eyes are fearful of the spotted hawk,
whose dappled wingspread opens to a phrase
that only victims gaping in the gaze
of Death Occurring can recite. To stalk;
to plunge; to harvest; the denial-squawk
of dying’s struggle; these are but a day’s
rebuke to hunger for the hawk, whose glazed
accord with Death admits no show of shock.
Death’s users know it is not theirs to...
7 tags
The Lateness of the Day
(For Patricia Weatherby)
It is the lateness of the day that turns my head,
that turns my mind and winds my head to ticking clocks,
the clocks that mock the destinations and designs
of all the things that I would do and be, set down,
lined up, like stops upon a route. They stretch away,
much farther than they first appeared. And time, still young,
still running on ahead in cruel surprise;...
8 tags
Glass
The song
sparrow puts all his
saying
into one
repeated song:
what
variations, subtleties
he manages,
to encompass denser
meanings, I’m
too coarse
to catch: it’s
one song, an over-reach
from which
all possibilities,
like filaments,
depend:
killing,
nesting, dying,
sun or cloud,
figure up
and become
song—simple, hard:
removed.
By A. R. Ammons
10 tags
the suicide kid
I went to the worst of bars
hoping to get
killed.
but all I could do was to
get drunk
again.
worse, the bar patrons even
ended up
liking me.
there I was trying to get
pushed over the dark
edge
and I ended up with
free drinks
while somewhere else
some poor
son-of-a-bitch was in a hospital
bed,
tubes sticking out all over
him
as he fought like hell
to live.
nobody would help...
15 tags
Disciple
The best advice I ever got about how to heal
came from a beleaguered camp counselor
who found herself suddenly surrounded
by a flock of heaving sobbing twelve year old girls.
It had been billed as a session on conflict resolution,
an alternative to wood cookie crafts, or horseshoes,
and maybe she should have seen it coming,
how water seeks the cracks in any dam.
One girl had been brutally...
6 tags
This Living Hand
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would[st] wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.
By John Keats
13 tags
Depressing Subway Poem Is Depressing Again, Thank... →
“The Commuter’s Lament” installation in the Times Square subway station is restored, thank goodness!